Now That I Can't Be Me
by jtav
Summary: Mako hasn't felt human since the fire.
"You can't let Mako control your whole life." Tu's voice was low but clearly annoyed. "At some point, you have to look out for yourself. I'd kill for the kind of offer Kuvira gave you."

Mako froze on the landing above them and leaned heavily on his cane. It wasn't the first time since the fire that someone had implied Bolin was spending too much time caring for Mako. It wasn't even the first time Mako had wondered that himself. But it was the first time he'd heard of an actual concrete offer. He stamped his cane on the marble and descended the stairs gingerly. Tu's mouth hung open, and Bolin went pale. "What's this about? What offer?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Bolin twiddled his thumbs and looked up at the ceiling. "Absolutely no offers here. Nope. Not a one. Not that I would take them if there were."

"Bolin…"

"Kuvira offered him a commission," Tu snapped. "And he won't take it because he's looking after you."

"I see." He looked at Bolin's wide eyes and the sweat on his brow. True, all of it. "Tu, could you leave the two of us alone for a second?" He punctuated his words with a glare, and if there was one thing his scars were good for, it was giving an excellent death glare. Tu scurried off. Mako watched him go and waited until the door was safely closed. "A lieutenant in the Provisional Authority. Sounds like pretty big deal."

"Maybe. But with everything going on, I don't think it's a good idea."

"'Everything' being me." There was a dull throb in Mako's right leg, and he sat on the bottom step. Returning to detective work had seemed positively mundane after everything with the Red Lotus. That was before what was supposed to have been a routine arrest of some low-level Agni Kais had turned out to be a set up. The building had burned around him, the flames beyond Mako's power to douse or control. It was a miracle he'd survived, the healers said. He'd learned to walk again, to bathe and dress himself despite the damage to his hand. He could even breathe a little fire, despite the scarring in his lungs. Some things were beyond him. He tired more easily. His leg hurt. The movements of his right hand were slow and clumsy with scarring. Most galling of all, the lightning had never come back. The thing that had made Zolt take a shine to him, made the difference between eating and not more than once, allowed him to kill Ming-Hua, was gone.

And Bolin, always hovering. Living for him. He was starting to understand why Korra had left. "Do you want to join the army?"

"I want to do right by you."

"That's not what I asked."

Bolin exhaled and looked at the floor. "Do you remember how happy you were when you got your badge? We could finally think about more than just money and actually help people. I—I want to do that too. And you remember what Ba Sing Se was like. These people need our help. And…" He trailed off, suddenly embarrassed.

"And?"

Bolin took another breath and spoke so rapidly that Mako had to strain to keep up. "And Korra can't be the Avatar right now and we were Team Avatar and so I figure I should try to make her proud." Another breath. "I miss helping people. I miss being part of something bigger than myself."

"Me too." The words came out before Mako could stop them, and they hung in the air like the scent of smoke. It was true. Korra had resurrected something in him that had died with his parents. She had shown him a world where he could do more than survive; he could be a hero. That had remained even after their romance had exploded due to his own selfishness and stupidity. And now he was an ex-cop with a shiny medal who spent his days in his other ex-girlfriend's mansion. There was a joke in there somewhere. "I can take care of myself. Tu's right. You've got to live your own life."

"But you've always looked out for me, ever since we were kids. I have to look out for you."

"I told you. I can take care of myself." He tried to smile, but the look on Bolin's face told him that it wasn't coming out quite right. "I can feed and dress myself now." He gestured up the stairs with his cane. "Even tackle the stairs if there aren't too many. I don't need a nurse or anything."

"That's not what I'm worried about. You didn't talk for three days straight after you woke up. And don't tell me it was all your throat hurting," he added when Mako opened his mouth to interrupt. "You've always been Mr. Moody, and it's only gotten worse in the past few months. I'm scared you'll spend all day in your room doing crosswords or something."

"Crosswords?" Mako mouthed and shook his head at the ridiculousness of the image. "I just don't have a lot of things going on right now. Most of my jobs involved fighting, pretend fighting, or shooting lightning." _None of which I can do now._ It had been easier those first few months when rehab had consumed him and brushing his own teeth was a victory. Now there were just long stretches of silence and boredom, punctuated by Bolin trying to drag him to the arena. He'd never realized that the only thing Mako saw there was the ghost of what he'd used to be. Butakka had offered him a job as a janitor like Toza. He'd lasted two days.

"I just worry you'll end up like Korra."

Mako didn't need to ask him what he meant. The image of Korra's dead stare in the weeks after Laghima's Peak were seared into his brain. Not even Asami had been able to rouse her for more than a few minutes at a time. She was only supposed to be gone for a few weeks. They hadn't heard from her in over a year. Her injuries had become a wall neither she nor they could breach. "I'm not her." He could still get angry or laugh at Bolin's bad jokes. The nightmares were a distant memory. He had seen other detectives, guys who had investigated horrific rapes or seen the partners die, suffer as Korra had. He didn't act like they did either.

He just felt completely useless.

"I'd feel better if you got a job. You were always better when you had a purpose."

"What he needs is a young lady," Grandma Yin said from the door.

Mako winced. Did his entire family have an opinion on how he should run his life? "I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Nonsense. There's nothing like companionship to lift the spirits. There are any number of women who wouldn't mind your scars at all. I'm told some even find them attractive."

Mako buried his face in his hands.

His grandmother continued. "What about the young lady you introduced me to? She seems like a perfectly lovely girl, and terribly lonely since Avatar Korra left."

Bolin turned an odd shade of green. "I don't think-that is to say, dating would be an awfully big step. Right, Mako?"

"Right." He had been a complete idiot back then, treated both Asami and Korra badly because he couldn't make up his mind. And now, dating and sex seemed to belong to another world entirely. A few cursory tests late at night confirmed his equipment still worked, but there was still the matter of his scars and disability. Even when he'd first dated Asami, he'd never doubted that she liked him. He had been able to make her feel safe, do something for her just as she gave him security. He wouldn't be a charity case for some socialite. He would be a partner or he would stay alone. And he had no more idea how to do that than how to find a job.

But a job was a less frightening prospect; he had been a much better worker than boyfriend. For a decade, he had thought of nothing higher than survival and shielding his brother from the worst of life on the streets. He'd stood over his parents' blackened bodies and sworn he would do his best to keep Bolin safe and happy. He'd broken more promises than he wanted to think about, but that one he had kept. He didn't know what a half-crippled ex-cop could do with himself. Maybe nothing. But for Bolin's sake, he would try to find out.

* * *

Asami had never liked Rui. He had been her father's secretary, more concerned with how things looked than what actually worked, the sort of man who refused to join the Equalists because they weren't "respectable." She hadn't fired him because she wasn't the sort of woman who fired people because they annoyed her and because he knew the names and birthdays of every minor United Republic bureaucrat Future Industries ever had to deal with. Right now, she wanted to stab him with his fountain pen.

"Ms. Sato, you can't run around the tenements like a street urchin. What if something were to happen. What if you were—" he swallowed heavily. "Mugged?"

Asami bit back a bit her laugh. Her father had tried to kill her. She had conducted a bombing run on an enemy army. She had been stranded in an endless desert. And the worst Rui could imagine was being _mugged_? "I've been to the Dragon Flats Borough plenty of times. It's perfectly safe. And I need to see what conditions are like on the ground if we're going to pitch this modernization plan to Raiko."

"About that." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Some members of the board have expressed me privately that they are concerned that you don't have Future Industries best interests at heart."

"That's ridiculous!" When the company had been about to go under, she had nearly broken herself trying to save it. She had sold weapons to the triads. "No one loves Future Industries more than me."

"But is Future Industries what you love the most? You were awfully anxious to run off to the Earth Kingdom at a time when most executives would be reconsolidating their control. It took you weeks to approve the revised vision statement."

 _Yes, a one sentence change_. "Korra needed me."

"We're all aware of your…attachment to Avatar Korra. Some people say that your desire to modernize the city has more to do with that then your fiduciary duty. It's all idle speculation and rumor of course."

"Of course," Asami muttered. She turned to gaze out her office window. Integrating the physical and spiritual worlds had been—was—Korra's dream, but it was a dream that hadn't yet come true. Vines choked the streets. The police blotter was full of traffic accidents caused by crashing into spirits on the city's narrow, twisting streets. The wealthiest citizens had reclaimed a measure of their old lives, but thousands in the poorest neighborhoods were still without power or worse while Raiko dithered over reconstruction plans. "This city could be so much more. The first truly modern city of a new age. Isn't that what Future Industries is for? Improving people's lives through innovation?"

"Future Industries, like all corporations, exists to return a profit for the shareholders. We're profitable right now, but…" He looked around as if he expected to find someone listening at the door, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Some say that Future Industries is only profitable because of Varrick's work and the assets we absorbed after his death. Of course, it was expected that Hiroshi's arrest would have an extremely negative effect on business, but it was more severe than expected. That Varrick was able to successfully defraud you does not help perceptions that you're too young and impulsive for a leadership role."

Gears clicked in Asami's mind. "They think I'm going to run the company into the ground for good this time."

"I wouldn't say it in so many words, but yes. Adventuring with the Avatar and going to the slums unaccompanied is not putting minds at ease. Might I suggest a more staid image? And perhaps focusing on our core businesses for a few more years."

This time Asami did laugh. "Have you ever known me to be the type who would just stand around and make small talk with a wineglass in my hand?"

Rui didn't laugh. "At least when you were younger, you confined your adventures to the racetrack. I understand a desire to clear your family name, but you've gone beyond that. It's as if nothing satisfies you but heroics and outsized ambitions."

"Is that wrong?" She had always known she would inherit a controlling interest in Future Industries, but she had envisioned a rather staid life when she was little. Yes, she would work on and race the cars she built, but most of her time would be spent in meetings and at boring but necessary parties. In due time, she would have a husband or wife. Perhaps children. Mako and Korra had changed all that. She was no longer a helpless little girl who cowered while her mother was murdered. She could stand up to evil, make the world better with nothing but her brain and her nerve. "I've seen how the people in those slums and tenements live. I can and will help them."

The rest of her day was a rush of conferences with engineers and inspecting factory floors. But through it all, a malevolent whisper: did these people doubt her? There was so much death and suffering in the world. She knew that better than most. Life could be more than pain. Out of her grief had come visions of wide, modern streets and a rail system that could connect an entire continent. It had been Korra's dream, yes, but it was Asami's dream too. She believed in it. She just had to convince the rest the world. She had to prove that she was her father's equal as CEO, that she belonged here.

She had to get that contract.

When the day finally ended, Asami climbed into her car and drove towards the mansion. She had an apartment in the city, but tonight the silence would be too much to bear. Bolin always knew how to make her smile. And Mako… that was two people she loved who had almost been murdered, and one who wasn't yet lost to her. Asami opened the front door.

She found Mako sitting on the sofa, a newspaper spread across his lap and a pen in his hand. His hair was shorter and neater than it had been a year ago, styled almost identically to General Iroh's. _I'm lucky it grew back,_ he'd said. _I might as well take care of it. Only good feature I have left._ Asami couldn't deny it. His face was pale like a corpse, with a stitched-together look. A black glove covered his right hand. She had seen people maimed at the factory and the track and had long ago trained herself not to stare, but it was harder with Mako. There was so little left of the dashing pro bender who had broken her heart.

He looked up at her. His smile was a grimace on his twisted lips, but the light in his eyes was real. "Asami!" He patted the seat next to him. "Got a minute? I need your advice."

Asami sat down next to him, and he handed her the newspaper. It was open to the classifieds section, and Mako had circled a few help wanted ads. "I'm kind of, well, job hunting, and you and Bolin know me better than anybody, and I was hoping you could tell me if you think I would be good for any of these?"

"Job hunting? Really?" He'd moved here after the fire so Bolin could help him, and some of the servants and his younger cousins had taken to calling him the ghost of the mansion behind his back. The shadow who hardly ever left the house and focused on his rehab with the same fierce intensity he had everything else. If he was finally thinking of a "life after…"

"It's the only way I can get Bolin to leave." He told her about the army commission and his conversation with Bolin. "I don't want to be the one who holds him back. I don't want to be a charity case. I want to do things again. I'm just not sure what."

Asami took the paper from his hands. "Custodial staff at the local elementary school. Ticket taker at the mover house. Cabbage Corp distribution center?" She wrinkled her nose. "Cabbage Corp?"

He held up his hands. "Chow Junior said the benefits package was nice."

"Ours is nicer," she groused and returned to the paper. The other jobs were along similar lines: entry level menial labor for not much pay. Her heart twisted. Mako had been so ambitious when they were dating, speaking dreamily of the apartment he hoped to buy with his winnings and the not-so-subtle hope that her father would hire him as security after the season was over. He had helped save the world three times over. He should hope for more than this. "I'm not seeing a lot of advancement opportunities. Is that something you have a problem with?"

"Do you think I can do better?" There was bitterness in his voice, but also hope. He wanted to be wrong. "I ruled out all the sales jobs. You know how I am about talking to people, and with this face…" He gestured with his good hand. "I guess if they needed someone to growl at people, I'd be their guy."

"I need someone to growl at Rui and the board." She told him what Rui had said. Mako listened in silence, but his face clouded as she spoke, the scars and his eyebrows making him seem genuinely terrifying. "This project can work. I am a good CEO, aren't I?" She wasn't running the company into the ground, was she? The incident with Varrick was a one-time lapse in judgment borne of desperation. Right?

"You're worth ten of any of them. None of them would get down in the dirt with their employees. Or let my family stay here. Or me." He covered her hand with his. "I believe in you. Korra would be proud."

The tightness in Asami's chest increased, and it had nothing to do with pity. It had been so long since anyone had held her hand or provided physical comfort. So long since anyone had said out loud that they believed in her. She had wanted Mako to say such things once, and hardly knew what to do now that he was saying them. Except enjoy the touch. She leaned in and put her head on his shoulder. It had been years since they had taken carriage rides in the park, and Asami knew she was never entirely safe, but he was so warm. Mako stiffened, and Asami started to pull back, mentally berating herself. Handholding aside, Mako had never been eager for touching and caressing, and who knew what the scarring did to his sensitivity? But then he relaxed and sighed. "This is nice. You really think I can do better than janitor?"

"Sure. We just need to—" A thought struck Asami and she sat up. "Rui wanted me to have a bodyguard? Says it's not decent for me to be running around the Dragon Flats Borough? Who better to 'protect' me than someone who grew up there?"

"Asami, I'm not exactly combat capable."

"I don't exactly need protecting." Let Rui and anyone else who thought she was fragile chew on that.

He smiled sadly at her. "I'm always getting things I don't deserve from you."

"It wouldn't be charity. "I do have some questions for the locals, but I don't exactly fit in no matter how much I dress down. You might make them more comfortable. Scars and all, which should tell you how much success I've been having."

"And I can growl at anybody who tries to hurt you?"

"That's the idea." Asami smiled back at him, and for a moment, she was eighteen again sharing a private joke with him. "Junior security staff earns four thousand a week. You get a week's paid vacation after six months."

Mako raised an eyebrow.

"I told you this wasn't charity. Welcome to Future Industries."


End file.
